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Plants that make a good meal
Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus), also called Poor-man’s Asparagus, is most easily described as a perennial spinach. It has been grown as a vegetable in cottage gardens for hundreds of years, although today it’s…
The Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa), also called Japanese Dogwood or Chinese Dogwood, s a deciduous tree growing up to 10 metres tall and 6 metres wide. It’s a much appreciated ornamental tree that gets heavily laden with delicious late summer fruits…
The Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is a patch-forming understory tree that has the largest edible fruit indigenous to the United States. The Cherokee and many other tribes used the pawpaw fruit for food…
The American groundnut (Apios Americana), or hopniss, is a climbing perennial plant from the woodland edges of North America. It’s related to the peanut and produces new shoots each year from numerous underground tubers, these new shoots twining around any supports they can find…
“The carob, the food of the Prodigal Son, of Mediterranean people, of the Mediterranean farm animals, and of the calves and dogs of America, also fed the cavalry of Wellington in his Peninsular campaign and that of Allenby in Palestine during the World War…
The Elderberry (Sambucus nigra) is a small tree growing to 6m (20 ft) high, bearing large bunches of edible flowers (raw/in drinks) and black fruits (raw or cooked)…
Siberian pea tree (Caragana arborescens), or Siberian peashrub, is a perennial shrub or small tree up to 6 m tall, with edible pods and seeds. The seeds are small but produced in abundance with 4-6 seeds per pod…
Garlic (Allium sativum) belongs to the onion family, and has been used by humans for over 7,000 years. Why? If you ask me it’s because it tastes so amazingly good, but of course one can’t neglect the medicinal properties of this plant…
Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is fittingly described as “a lumber yard in a single species” by whole systems designer Ben Falk. Garden historian Wesley Greene goes even further and calls it “the tree on which the US was built”…
The Common Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides), also called the Seaberry, is a thorny shrub growing up to 6m that produces abundant fruit that is very high in vitamins A & C…
Native to southwest Asia, mulberry trees are most well known for their fruits, which can be used as a food source in a variety of ways. They are fast growing and drought resistant, and grow wild and under cultivation in many temperate world regions…
